The best iPhone tethering apps (and one to avoid)

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Wireless carriers have us right where they want us. When there are only four significant national providers in the US, there’s only so much competition for our business. So when they all band together (even if only in mindset) and decide on a “new rule,” customers are forced to play along.

A prime example of this is tethering. Of course tethering is the act of sharing a device’s internet connection with one or more other devices. Back when carriers provided unlimited data, charging extra for tethering made more sense. Back then, it served the purpose of preventing “unlimited” users from trying to replace home DSL connections and racking up gigabytes upon gigabytes of monthly data.

But when carriers shifted to capped data plans, charging for tethering lost all rational justification. You get a set amount of data already — why are you forced to pay extra to share that data with another device? It’s a policy that treats customers with hostility.

Hackers prevail

Fortunately, there are ways for iPhone users to get around this. Well, at least there are if your device is jailbroken. Apple would never allow a tethering app into the App Store (at least not intentionally, devs frequently sneak the feature into other apps).

The first thing you’ll need to do is to jailbreak your iPhone. Right now, we’re at a point in time when every iPhone can be jailbroken. If you haven’t already jailbroken your handset, you can refer to the corresponding tutorial:

After you’ve jailbroken your iPhone, you’ll want to get a quality tethering app from Cydia. Fortunately, there are a couple of great options.

Avoid MyWi (for now)

The most popular iPhone tethering app is called MyWi — but I actually don’t recommend it. This isn’t due to its feature set, which is second to none. It’s because the developers of MyWi haven’t taken any measures to hide tethering from carriers.

During the last year, AT&T and Verizon started cracking down on accounts that showed unauthorized tethering. MyWi was almost always the app that customers who received the notices were using, and the devs haven’t updated it with a stealth mode. It’s a great app, but if it leads to your being forced into a paid tethering plan, there’s no point.

The best iPhone tethering apps

Two apps that have implemented precautions are both on our list of best Cydia apps: TetherMe and PdaNet. TetherMe costs $4.99 in Cydia (a bargain compared to the $20 MyWi), and PdaNet is pricier at $14.99.

The two apps take different approaches to tethering. TetherMe goes the simple route: it enables iOS’s native tethering (without a plan) and edits APNs to hide it from carriers. It’s simple, it’s easy to use, and it’s one of the cheapest tethering apps out there.

Pdanet, meanwhile, offers a more advanced feature set, and it appears to take a stricter approach to hiding your tethering from your carrier. It lets you choose between “level 1” hiding, which should suffice for most users, or the more powerful “level 2,” which gives you mobile versions of sites on your tethered device. PdaNet functions as a standalone app, and doesn’t involve the native iOS tethering interface.

The carriers’ customer-hostile policy towards tethering is annoying, but it’s comforting to know that the development community has risen to the occasion. There are other ways that wireless providers could potentially detect your tethering (packet sniffing?), but we haven’t heard any reports of that. Chances are, these two apps will let you enjoy free tethering without any hassle.